In the very, very competitive industry of sales, there are several mindsets when it comes to the insurance industry. My best friend Red Little who recently passed away 3 weeks away from his 90th birthday. Was a powerhouse of knowledge and strength when it came to sales and attitude. He grew up riding a mule, went to owning two insurance companies, airplanes pilots, mercedes and mayback's.
I found that fascinating...a self made man in every sense of the word.
He told me that from his very humble beginnings he had to consistently work on his own attitude of which he created rules. He would not associate nor stay in the company of negative people. He felt negativity was a cancer to anyone in sales and in fact anyone with the desire to succeed and prosper could not be around negativity or negative people.
He taught me to envision your dreams, your desires and ask for Devinne intervention on prosperity. He said there is nothing wrong with asking for prosperity. He also said prosperity will never happen to a lazy, negative person. Dishonesty will always be met with like from our creator. I found his candor so interesting, I think that is one of the reasons we became so close in business and personal friends. I asked so many questions and advise it had to become a game for him....I honestly think he enjoyed talking business with someone who soaked up every detail he offered.
He told me that even though I might be taking in allot of life experience to apply to my business and life, he was also learning from me. I was very surprised when he told me that he learned so much of the new business practices of Internet, advertising, less overhead, less employees. He often asked me how can me and my companies do the millions in business that we do with over 1/2 the staff that he did?
I said Red, it's simple if you think about it. Your from a time when you have managers and each one has an executive assistant. We have none of that. The days of a manager with an assistant is really over. With the emails and paperless communication there is no need for it. He really soaked up my business practice and did away with many of his 54 years of habit and way of doing business for so many years.
He wanted and set up his company to thrive after his passing, most thought he would have me step in and run his operation however I was not really interested, I had my own companies to run. I never wanted anything from this man except his friendship. His long time employees saw me as a threat though. I would notice many inefficiencies and tell him. He would act on it and you can only imagine how that was met with ill will. At his age he did not understand the computers and Internet. I would walk by and see them on Facebook or myspace and i would tell him, they are playing. This caused friction.
I had one employee who actually thought he could replace my friendship and he tried and tried and Red was really turned off by his presence, attitude and style. This person was so outwardly gay that he could not hide it as hard as he tried. His speech pattern, his dress, his walk, was all so embarrassing and disgusting to even gay people.
In my opinion there are gay people and then there are flaming gay people who have a learned speech pattern the pick up where the "s's" in their sentences are extremely elongated and it's disgusting. No one is taught to speak like that, no one is taught to speak and act like the Church lady from Saturday Night Live, but it was right there in front of us and it was just very disgusting. Walk into a bank, a business, a meeting with someone like this and watch the looks from the people, they looked at me like what is this? I think I gave this person some legitimacy of his position however as I learned his weakness in life, his entire being made me ill to look at and listen to.
My friend Red said there are many personalities in life we will run across however trying to deal with a person who is a detriment to him being around us and our companies was not a good situation.
At Red's funeral the Sheriff and Red's good friend JD, came to me and asked why was this person there? I said I have no idea...they said Red hated him..should we throw him out?
I said that's up to you, I am here to pay my respect to Red and his wife, only. Those long time employees, hicks from the sticks were term limits that should have been fired long ago. You cannot build a company to go on into perpetuity with people who have no vision for growth. Then you have a marketing division who is looking out for nothing but themselves. It's sad to say, but Red's dream was gone in months. He chose the wrong people to run his operation. In efforts or overprotect, he picked people with greedy hands and greedy minds and forgot why they were there, to market.
That is the big mistake made that ended his dream, I am sad to say.
He forgot what he told me, in your life you will only have true friends that you can count on one hand. At his age i knew he was telling me the truth....but he forgot, Business, his business needed that friend to live on as he wanted. His friend would and could have saved his empire and he forgot. He was manipulated in the end by those people, but it's sad he forgot what he taught me, the friends on that hand are key, which I will never forget.
I miss you Red!
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